Quite Delicious-Looking
"If you don't like that, then you'd best cooperate quietly."
At his grandfather's words, it felt like all the resentment he'd kept corked up inside him was about to blow.
No, it wasn't as if he simply refused to talk — so why was even his grandfather so desperate to pry him open?
Frankly, his situation itself was easy enough to explain. Lies didn't work on the gods, so all he'd have to do was use that fact to make them believe him. He might get treated like a lunatic, but it would be more than enough to get the point across.
The real problem was the fallout. There was a reason the phrase "leaking heaven's secrets" existed — the moment the future was known, it changed, no exceptions. Acting carelessly here could ruin the very future he was trying to save.
Say he told his grandfather, Your Familia is going to be destroyed. Would the old man really sit still? Knowing him, the odds were far higher that he'd nod along, cancel the quest, cancel the expedition, and hole up in Orario for good.
Who marches into a battle they know they'll lose? That's not a challenge — that's suicide.
Not that dying would be a bad thing, exactly. Better to live, after all. It was just the cost — if only the price weren't the future itself.
For them, this might simply be the road to a better tomorrow. But for him, it amounted to a total denial of everything he was. There was no such thing as a sure thing, so he needed to rule out that scenario as much as possible and yet—
Why... why did it have to be you...?
The indignation curdled, in the end, into grief.
To be persecuted by someone he had once trusted, leaned on, and looked up to — it carved something large out of his chest.
He knew perfectly well that the old man before him was not the being he remembered. And still, he couldn't bring himself to swallow the sorrow, and looked up at the aged god with eyes brimming over.
What the hell is with this kid now?
By his own reckoning, the boy's reaction would come down to two options: panic and babble incoherently, or give up and open his mouth.
After some deliberation, he'd judged the boy would choose neither flight nor silence. The result, however, was silence. Surprising, maybe, but not particularly strange — holding one's tongue when facing the gods was the standard playbook.
Only, this case felt different in flavor.
Resentment — no, more precisely, something close to grief — was bleeding out of those eyes fixed on him, and even the great Zeus himself had no choice but to be thrown off balance.
If the boy had chosen wariness or contempt upon hearing him out, that he could understand. But resentment? Anger, at least, would have made sense. But this sorrowful, betrayed stare — what was he supposed to do with that?
It made him feel like he was the one in the wrong, and a conscience he didn't know he had started to ache. That grief was such a pure emotion that a sensation he'd thought long dead came crawling back.
The expression of a child betrayed by his own parent, perhaps. To receive a look he'd never once gotten from his own children — Zeus was beyond flustered.
He tried to say something, but the words jammed in his throat and wouldn't come. Guilt, a sin most unfitting for a god, seemed to be welling up from somewhere deep.
And so the two of them stood there, unable to do anything, a suffocating middle-ground silence settling over the underground chamber — until Zeus, who couldn't bear it a second longer, finally spoke first.
"...Fine. But even so, you must have your reasons for staying quiet."
"...!"
"So just tell me what you can without putting yourself in a bind. I'll take responsibility and handle the rest."
He said it as if he'd meant to say I don't get it, but even so, I believe in you! from the very start — and a faint glimmer lit the boy's eyes.
A look almost impossible to describe, as pure as a lost child finding his parents again. And once more, Zeus's conscience twisted the knife.
"Ahem... First things first — show me your face, won't you? You've been skulking around looking suspicious as all hell. That's what's causing the trouble."
"Ah..."
Something still felt off about all this, so Zeus switched tactics — persuasion rather than pressure. Strangely enough, he realized on some instinctive level that this was the right approach with a boy who obeyed him so readily.
At the suggestion, the boy began fidgeting restlessly. Apparently, showing his face itself was the problem.
Hiding the face, is it...
Well, it wasn't exactly a rare predicament. There were a hundred reasons a person might not want their face seen.
Some exalted station they couldn't reveal. A face too famous for its own good. Or a face that was itself classified information. But in every one of those cases, one grand prerequisite came attached:
Being watched. The utterly obvious assumption that other people could see you.
That assumption didn't hold underground, down here. And even so, the boy refused to show his face? That left exactly two possibilities.
Either his face bore some terrible scar he was ashamed of—
—or he was someone who must not be seen. By him.
And his gut said this time, it was the latter.
You can't show me your face, hm...
Far too suspicious. He hadn't even been able to guess at the reason.
In other words: the unknown. And the curiosity inside Zeus began to writhe and swell, growing by the second.
"What's the matter? Don't tell me you're asking me to trust a man who won't even show his face?"
"Th-that's..."
As expected, righteous logic left him no room to protest. Unlike before, the boy could only stammer, sweat trickling down his face.
But at last, seemingly steeling himself, he slowly raised his hands and pulled back his hood.
"Wha—"
Zeus's eyes went as wide as they had ever gone in his long existence.
And so, worn down by his grandfather's silver tongue, he ended up revealing his face after all.
Call it fitting for a man called "Grandpa," but he'd known the old man's way with words since long ago. He'd never entertained the notion of winning a debate — and yet in the blink of an eye, he'd somehow arrived at a situation where showing his face was the only option left.
It made him a little uneasy, but he decided to think positively. The only stretch of time when his grandfather would look at him and see things normally was after the failed subjugation. Nothing about this moment should seriously reshape the future.
And honestly, time travel wasn't the kind of phenomenon a person could easily wrap their head around. Nobody was going to look at a matching hair color and shout, It's you — from the future!
Just look at Meteria — he wasn't the only person in the world with white hair, was he? At this level, he was thoroughly safe.
"You..."
His grandfather was staring at him, eyes stretched wide with astonishment.
First at the shock of white hair. Then at the scarlet eyes.
He'd wondered if the crushed, ruined left eye was what had caught the old man's attention — but no, apparently it was the perfectly intact one that fascinated him. A first for this particular reaction. Novel, in a way.
But why was he so stunned? Had he figured something out...?
"Gra—"
"You—"
A sudden wave of unease made him try to speak first, but his grandfather beat him to it. The old man gazed at him with grave eyes, hemming and hawing as if carefully choosing his words.
He had never seen his grandfather like this, and it only deepened the dread. Had he really been found out...?
Just as the creeping anxiety began to shake his emotions loose at the roots, his grandfather's mouth opened.
"You know... you look pretty delicious?"
"...Huh?"
"At this level it's possible... no, absolutely possible."
Chuuurp.
—Nyeheheh, Bell, mmwah~♥
The sight of his grandfather licking his lips superimposed itself, unbidden, over the image of a certain sun god.
A chill ran down his spine. Before he knew it, his pectorals had gone taut and hard.
His body had slipped out of his control and begun mounting a hostile response. His reason caught up a beat late, scrambling to interpret what his reflexes had already decided.
He was currently being pinned against the wall by his grandfather. What had been mildly unpleasant a moment ago was now becoming extremely unpleasant.
No — more importantly, where was he supposed to run—?!
"Hera's had me pent up for a while now, but if you look like this..."
"W-wait...!"
Blindsided, a primal terror he'd never felt even in the Dungeon's deepest floors came flooding in.
Danger. Danger—?!
He ratcheted his guard to its absolute limit, already calculating — if it came to it, deicide, humanity's gravest taboo—
"Let me see that ass, boy—"
"Dear~?"
"...Huh?"
A voice — gentle, yet at the same time cold as the north wind and sharper than a honed blade — carved straight through Zeus's body.
His heart dropped like a stone. Instinct glimpsed fate itself and began to tremble. He cranked his head around with creaking, rusted movements, and there she stood.
"You snap and snarl at me, insisting you'd never do such a thing—"
"N-no, wait—"
"—and in the end, here's your true nature, bared for all to see. You—"
"Hold on... Hera... just let me explain—!"
"You... rotten, crusty old bastard!!"
SMACK!!
"GUWAAAAGH?!?!"
The goddess's palm detonated against the aged god's cheek.
Zeus's waist bent like a drawn bow.